C.A. Gray's Blog, page 26

Review of Sense and Sensibility

One of Jane Austen’s best!

This time I listened to the version narrated by Rosamund Pike, who did a wonderful job. I hadn’t read it in a long time, though I remember the film version quite well. I just love how Austen manages to create such vivid characters, trusting the understanding of the reader to intuit everything she doesn’t say about them. She never spells out their defects for us–she just shows us their true motivations under the veil of an invariably polite society. Such a dry wit she had.

Eleanor is the sister with whom I’m sure Austen herself identified, and the one with whom the readers will identify by the way she is presented. She and Marianne and their mother find themselves in dire financial straits upon the death of their father (along with their younger sister Margaret, who so rarely comes into the story that I forgot they even had another sister). Their father actually had money, but because of the rules of society at the time, their older half-brother John inherited all. On his deathbed, their father entreated John to provide for his sisters and wife, but John’s stingy and selfish wife Fanny persuades him not to, and he’s under her thumb enough that he does as she wishes. Because of this, they have very little, which makes neither sister a very eligible marriage prospect.

So sets up the dynamic: money always stands in the way of romance in Austen novels, as men too stood to elevate their fortunes and positions by marriage. Fanny’s brother Edward falls in love with Eleanor, but his mother will not hear of it… and as Eleanor later learns, this isn’t even the biggest obstacle between them, as Edward betrothed himself in his youth to a girl still more impoverished than herself, though he no longer loves her. Eleanor eventually meets the girl, Lucy Steele –and from the film version, I’d forgotten that Lucy was quite so hatable as she appears in the book. Conscious that Eleanor might have a claim on Edward and jealous of it, Lucy affects to be Eleanor’s friend, when in reality she only intends to drive the metaphorical knife between her ribs by imparting confidence of her own superior claim upon him. It’s so incredibly catty–which is the genius of Austen’s writing. What she doesn’t say is so abundantly clear, she would have detracted from the effect to say it in so many words.

Marianne, meanwhile, is the sensibility to Eleanor’s sense. She’s all extremes, and the folly of this is ultimately visited upon her in her near-death from an excess of psychological distress. She falls in love with a scoundrel (as happens to nearly all of Austen’s heroines at some time or other, before they can truly appreciate their real prince) and pines away for love of him until she almost dies for real. Only then can she appreciate the man whom her idealism had originally taught her to despise, but whose character was far superior.

My primary complaint of all of Austen’s novels is the way she skips over the climax in generalizations. We never get to see the actual proposal or aftermath of it! It’s just mean, really, after all that build-up.

My rating: *****

Language: none

Violence: none

Sexual content: none

Woke content: none of course 

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Crown of Coral and Pearl, Mara Rutherford

Today’s podcast review comes from this blog review of Crown of Coral and Pearl. 

Check out this episode!

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Review of The Last of the Moon Girls

This seemed almost like a Rhys Bowen sort of novel: it’s a murder mystery, but with a lot of character development, artistic expression, subtle magic, and a love story thrown in. Somehow it wasn’t what I expected, but I really liked it.

Lizzy Moon has spent much of her young life trying to distance herself from her family: a legacy of women (exclusively) who lived on and managed Moon Girl Farm, an herb farm and apothecary where generations of magically gifted Moon women practiced herbalism. Of course this led the townspeople in their small town to consider them witches–and while they kind of embraced that term too, amongst themselves, to them it never had the “black magic” connotations that it did for the villagers. But it all exploded when two teenage girls’ bodies were found in the pond on Moon Girl Farm. Althea, Lizzy’s grandmother, was an easy target to blame, even though she had no motive and aside from the location of the bodies, there was no evidence to connect her to the crime. The town blamed her anyway, and even though the police had no case to bring charges, they stopped looking for the killer, effectively assuming that the crime was solved. As a result of the town turning on Althea, Lizzy’s flighty mother Ranna vanished without a trace, and Lizzy eventually left too. When Lizzy learns that Althea has died, she’s forced to go back, if only to sell the farm and set Althea’s affairs in order. But, Althea “knew” (in that way she knew things) that Lizzy would need some last guidance from the grandmother who had raised her. So in addition to the books each Moon girl kept through the ages documenting the use of her particular gift (analogous to spell books I guess), Lizzy also inherits a book written just to her. Throughout the story, as Lizzy faces one challenge after another, her grandmother seems to have anticipated it with a page from the book sharing just the right wisdom that she would need at that time.

Lizzy realizes that she owes it to her grandmother, as well as to the girls’ family and the girls themselves to find their killer at last. This stirs up old prejudices, but also paints a target on Lizzy’s back, with progressively more overt, anonymous threats to scare her off.

Meanwhile, Andrew, a boy whom she knew from school many years ago moved back in next door as a handyman, who had helped her grandma from time to time. She later learns he’s loved her for as long as he’s known her. But she has it in her mind that she can’t ever have a normal life, because the Moon girls have unusual powers, and because for generations they’ve only kept a man around long enough to conceive a daughter and then raising her alone (though there’s no reason for this–it’s just what they did). Lizzy is drawn to Andrew too, and her reasoning for keeping him at arm’s length just felt flimsy, like a device to maintain the romantic tension.

In the process of falling in love with Andrew and a touching reunion with her mother, who comes home in the midst of the murder investigation, of course Lizzy reconnects with her roots too, and “finds herself.” There’s a good nail-biting climax, and a satisfying resolution.

My rating: ****

Language: I can’t recall, I think there is a bit, but not much

Sexual content: present, but it’s fade-to-black

Violence: the prologue is quite grisly but that’s as bad as it gets. From there on it’s pretty tame for a murder mystery

Political content: I don’t recall anything specifically “woke”

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The Last of the Moon Girls, Barbara Davis

Today’s podcast comes from this blog review of The Last of the Moon Girls.

Check out this episode!

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Review of The Plus One Pact

This felt just like a Beth Moran book–so the cover art was good branding, I guess. Maybe all chick lit is similar? The genre is new to me so I’m still not quite sure… but it’s like a book version of a chick flick.

29-year old Cara (and I’m noticing a theme there too: chick lit protagonists are usually late 20s, early 30s, and still trying to “find themselves”) managed to weasel her way out of being her cousin’s bridesmaid when the cousin wanted her to lose weight to fit into a very specific dress from the 1970s. But the cousin, terribly put out about it, had invited Cara’s then-boyfriend Lloyd to attend with her, and refused to rescind the invitation after they broke up. But she told Cara that she was still allowed a “plus one” if she wanted.

Cara, unfortunately, has been through every match on an online dating app in her area. When the very last man available stands her up for a date, a gorgeous man named Joe Mills, who goes by Millsy, of course takes pity on her and invites her out to an exclusive nightclub instead. Millsy later takes Cara for a makeover while he gets his eyebrows waxed… and we later learn that he’s a body double actor for various celebrities (mostly for nude scenes, it’s implied). All this was a bit of an impediment to thinking of him as a love interest for Cara, as are the numerous comments from the peanut gallery that he will sleep with anything that moves. But between this and his behavior towards Cara, they think of each other as “just friends” from the very beginning. They agree to be each other’s “plus one” for various family outings over the summer: for Millsy, this gets him off the hook from various relatives who think he needs to just get serious with someone for a change, and for Cara, it gives her a buffer from her ex, whom her family unfortunately still adores.

From there, you can probably fill in the rest of the antics. The two of them get into various scrapes, setting them up for sparks to fly. Cara develops a minor crush on Millsy’s half brother, whom he unfortunately hates. Cara meanwhile suppresses all thoughts of Millsy in a romantic way, until forced to acknowledge them… after which there are misunderstandings, conflict, and various confrontations that lead to a sweet resolution at the end. It’s basically an updated “When Harry Met Sally.”

My rating: ***1/2

Language: present but pretty much the way it would be in most films these days… not constant. 

Sexual content: present, though in a fade-to-black kind of way

Violence: none

Political content: I’m trying to remember… nothing leaped out at me, though I suspect there was a little bit. 

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Review of Crown of Coral and Pearl

This was a YA dystopian fantasy that actually held my interest — which is pretty rare lately, since I feel like the characters are often flat and the plots tired. This was good enough that I raced through it, though I don’t think it’s good enough that I’ll keep reading in the series.

A tradition holds that the crown prince of Ilara will marry the most beautiful woman of the ocean village of Varenia (though I was a little confused about its location relative to the ocean, since later in the story it sounds like they grew up IN the water). Identical twins Nor and Zadie are unquestionably the prettiest of their generation, and their heartless mother, who feels she should have been chosen in her own time, is obsessed with maintaining the girls’ beauty. It’s clear she doesn’t care about them at all, beyond their physical appearance. (This “prettiest one” trope is done to death in the YA genre, but it was a necessary setup for the rest of the story, so I went with it.) Reckless Nor (who is in many ways Katniss from the Hunger Games) risked her life to save her sister when they were 10, and suffered a tiny scar on her face as a consequence. From that point on, it was clear that Zadie would be the one to marry the prince when the time came… only, Zadie (who is basically Snow White, and sees the best in everyone) fell in love with the governor’s son and wants to stay and marry him. When she finds out that their mercenary mother will betroth Nor to him instead once Zadie is gone, she becomes desperate, and scars herself on purpose–within an inch of her life.

The elders of Varenia believe that Nor injured Zadie on purpose, out of envy, but the king already sent an emissary to meet Zadie (and Nor), and so at least the emissary knows what the girl should look like before she arrives. The elders believe that the cold-hearted king of Ilara is liable to punish their entire village if they send a replacement girl (another suspend your disbelief moment). So they choose to put concealer on Nor’s scar and send her in her sister’s place, pretending to be Zadie.

Turns out, it’s Prince Ceren himself, not the king, who is vicious–the king is kind, but deathly ill. Because of convoluted Ilarian laws, if he dies before Ceren’s 21st birthday, Ceren won’t automatically inherit the throne and Ilara will be cast into chaos (yet another suspend your disbelief moment–these are the rules of the world, nevermind why). It also turns out that the emissary who met the girls was Ceren’s younger half-brother Talin, who was instantly drawn to Nor, and she to him. He also figures out pretty early on that Nor isn’t Zadie. Ceren realizes that his wife to be is in love with his brother, and he’s jealous to the extent that he wants everyone to worship him, though he himself is a heartless sadist who gets progressively more reprehensible as the story goes on.

Political intrigue and minor magic manage to keep the story going and held my interest. While Nor is a character I’ve read many times in YA novels in the past, I like all the various iterations of her enough to have been happy to read one more. Even though this is the first in a series, it doesn’t end on a cliffhanger (which I appreciate) so it can be read as a standalone.

My rating: ***1/2

Language: none

Sexual content: none (I think it’s alluded to in conversation but that’s all)

Violence: present but not graphic

Political content: I don’t recall anything woke

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The White Princess, Philippa Gregory

Today’s podcast comes from this blog review of The White Princess by Philippa Gregory. 

Check out this episode!

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Review of The White Princess

This is a very difficult book to rate… on one hand, the story was compelling, very well written, and it made me think. On the other hand, I hated the actual story, and I regret reading it, honestly. It did a great job of stirring up a sense of helpless rage, though I don’t consider that to be a good thing. I almost stopped a little less than halfway through, and I kept going only because I paused and read the synopsis of Elizabeth of York’s life on Wikipedia, to make sure that things would get better. Thus reassured, on I read… but either Wikipedia was wrong, Philippa Gregory took a great deal of narrative license, or else Wikipedia just didn’t bother to mention the main points of Elizabeth’s story that upset me because it didn’t consider them relevant.

Elizabeth was the last in the line of the York dynasty, but there were no queens back then yet, so she never expected to be more than the daughter and later the wife and hopefully the mother of a king, herself. She was hailed as a great beauty, and in Gregory’s rendition, Richard III was not only her uncle but also her lover. Also in her rendition, Richard III did not murder Elizabeth’s two young brothers, the princes who were locked in the tower of London. They vanished, but no one knew for sure what happened to them… except, in this version, Elizabeth and her mother managed to smuggle a page boy in to the Tower instead of her brother Richard, and they sent Richard away in the dead of night.

Meanwhile, Henry Tudor won the battle against Richard III because Sir William Stanley decided to back him. He became King of England in Richard III’s place, and pledged to marry Elizabeth in order to join himself with the rival Yorks, so that (ideally) no one would be able to rally behind the Yorks and overthrow him. Considering Henry’s claim to the throne was tenuous at best–in fact, his mother Margaret used to be lady-in-waiting to Elizabeth’s mother–this was a very real concern. So real, in fact, that it consumed Henry’s entire reign and life.

The first time I almost stopped reading was when Henry raped Elizabeth every night for three weeks after meeting her, determined to prove that she was fertile before he would agree to marry her. This isn’t historical, but it’s based upon the fact that their first son, Arthur, was born 8 months after their wedding–so seems plausible. This really set the tone for Henry’s character as depicted by Gregory. He was a Jekyll and Hide character, flipping between loving and tender on one hand, and wild with suspicion of everyone around him on the other, willing to go to horrible lengths of evil in order to protect himself. According to Wikipedia, though, Elizabeth and Henry were a real love match. There were hints of that in Gregory’s rendition, and there was one brief moment in this version where the pair were truly in love. It didn’t last long, though. In fact, it baffled me that, given the way Henry behaved, Elizabeth didn’t literally plot his murder from the start. He had killed the man Elizabeth supposedly loved (Richard III), stolen his crown, raped Elizabeth repeatedly before their marriage, and locked up her innocent young cousin Teddy in the Tower of London for most of his life for the crime of being a male with a drop of York blood in him–and all of that was just for a start. Henry’s power-crazed mother Margaret was even worse than he was, because she seemed so much more self-righteous, believing that God was on their side and wanted them to have the throne at any price.

The plot for most of the book centered around the boy whom history calls Perkins Warbeck–a “pretender” to the throne who claimed to be Elizabeth’s lost brother Richard, who had been locked in the Tower of London. According to Gregory’s afterword, some historians believe that “Perkins” really was Richard, and in fact he was quite convincing in that role. Henry was obsessed with finding and murdering him–and Elizabeth, who lost two little brothers in such a tragedy, and whose cousin even now suffered the same fate at Henry’s hands, still stood by him in loyalty even as he plotted to kill this young man whom she knew might turn out to be her long lost brother after all. In this version, he is her brother, and comes to court long enough for her to meet and interact with him, though she can never acknowledge his true identity for his own protection. The only reason Henry doesn’t murder him at once, in this version, is because he falls in love with the boy’s wife, and has an affair with her. (This too defies Wikipedia’s assessment that he and Elizabeth had a happy marriage… if true.) But in the end, Henry has both Teddy and “Perkins” executed. I knew the whole time that Elizabeth’s long lost brother couldn’t take the throne, because there was a Tudor dynasty, after all… and yet, somehow, I just kept hoping it wouldn’t end the way I knew it must end. In the last pages, Henry is racked with horrible guilt for what he’s done, and asks Elizabeth’s forgiveness. She gives it to him. From a character standpoint, this made absolutely no sense to me.

At least when I read horrible headlines of current events, I have the recourse of prayer. I can pray against atrocities, and for the perpetrators and the victims both. But for history, when I’m made to feel the emotions of a dreadful story in such vivid detail, there is only helpless rage. What’s done is done. One thing that did occur to me, though, was that the antagonists of the story, Henry and Margaret, had never a moment’s peace. They were the very embodiment of evil, because they were not just power-hungry and selfish, but also constantly terrified that they could lose it all in a moment. For me, this puts a new spin on those who  occupy a similar position today. They can seem so glib and smug from the outside… but they’re probably terrified, too.

Anyway, I don’t think I’ll be reading any more Philippa Gregory novels, as talented as she is.

My rating: **1/2

Language: I think there was a little but not much

Sexual content: present, and disturbing

Violence: present, and disturbing

Political content: historical only

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Once and For All, Sarah Dessen

Today’s podcast review comes from this blog review of Once and For All. 

Check out this episode!

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Catching Katie, Robin Lee Hatcher

Today’s podcast review comes from this blog review of Catching Katie. 

Check out this episode!

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